Black Library Weekly – W/C 15/10/18

Hello and welcome to the latest instalment of Black Library Weekly, my regular look at what’s been happening in the world of Black Library. This week has been chock full of new releases, both on Monday and at the weekend, with some really interesting stuff to talk about. Let’s take a look…

Monday
After two weeks which featured brand new short audio dramas for Digital Monday, this week brought with it a change back to the usual short story format with Repentia by Alec Worley (£2.49 in ebook). Worley’s first Adepta Sororitas short story – Whispers – was released a little over a year ago, and while Repentia is quite a different type of story it’s another example of how interesting his depiction of Sisters of Battle is. This time around it’s fairly obvious what the focus of the story is – Sisters Repentia – and it’s a bonkers, intense, action-packed story. Really, really worth checking out – have a read of my review here.

Midweek
The usual Black Library-focused Warhammer Community article on Wednesday was this week all about the upcoming Black Library Weekender – specifically, the contents of the goody bags that are included in the ticket price. Over the years the various Weekenders have almost always included a goody bag of sorts, usually containing a few badges, a bookmark, maybe a pen or a notebook, that sort of thing. This year BL are upping their game, as the goody bags are going to contain a lot more! Here’s a breakdown:

  • A copy of the Crusade + Other Stories short story anthology.
  • A set of the 20 Years of Black Library postcards.
  • An A3 poster of Gotrek Gurnisson.
  • Five A5 art prints featuring BL cover art.
  • A sticker sheet featuring images from some of the Black Library Novella Series 1 covers.
  • Some badges (can’t have a goody bag without badges).
  • A keyring.

That’s pretty impressive, all told. The Crusade anthology and the postcards come to £20 RRP between them so from a purely monetary perspective it’s great, but more than that it’s just a really nice selection of goodies that should together make a good start to the weekend. Plenty of things for authors to sign in amongst all that too, if you’re a fan of collecting autographs.

That’s all the official BL-related news for the midweek period, although continuing the Weekender theme I’d just like to highlight my article from Thursday this week, Black Library Weekender 2018 – A Survival Guide. With the event fast approaching I wanted to collect together some thoughts and suggestions for how to make the most of the weekend, so in that article I talk about what to bring, what to plan for, and a few do’s and don’ts for while you’re in the various seminars and signings. It’s all just my opinion of course, but hopefully there’s something useful in there for anyone who’s going to be at the Weekender!

Weekend
No fewer than four releases this weekend, with two new Horus Heresy titles – one a main-range anthology and the other a limited edition Primarchs novel – plus a 40k audio drama and an Age of Sigmar anthology.

Let’s take a look at the Heresy to begin with, starting with the swanky limited edition hardback of Guy Haley’s Corax: Lord of Shadows (£40). The tenth novel in the Primarchs series, and Guy’s second after Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia, this one should be really interesting as it’s a Primarch who we’ve tended to see written by Gav Thorpe up until now – a new perspective is always worthwhile! As usual, you can read what Guy has to say about this book in my Rapid Fire interview (which I actually posted last week, as the book was originally slated for release last weekend) – check that out by clicking here, or on the banner below.

Next up and continuing with the Horus Heresy theme we’ve got Heralds of the Siege, which is available in the usual hardback (£20) and ebook (£9.99) formats, but as with a few books recently there doesn’t appear to be an audio version just yet. Maybe that will arrive a bit later, we’ll see. You wouldn’t know from the BL website, but this is book 52 in the series (the GW website shows the number on the spine), and is an anthology collecting together sixteen short stories. Some of these were originally audio dramas, while the rest have been released in ebook format before. Here’s the contents list – click on the names to read my reviews!

Moving onto 40k, we’ve got another Guy Haley release (he’s a busy man) with Prophets of Waaagh!, a three-part audio drama available in CD (£12) and MP3 (£9.99) formats. All three of the individual stories – The End of Daze, Bozgat’s Big Adventure and The Waaagh! Faker – featured in this were released as short audios back in July/August, but this is the first time they’ve be released as a single product. As you might expect, I’ve got another Rapid Fire interview with Guy about this release – check that out here, or by clicking the link below.

Last but not least, for Age of Sigmar we’ve got a new anthology – Sacrosanct & Other Stories – which is available for the budget price of £4.99 in both paperback and ebook formats. Following in the footsteps of Hammerhal & Other Stories (plus Crusade + Other Stories for 40k) this features a brand new novella – in this case Sacrosanct by CL Werner – along with a bunch of short stories and even an excerpt from an upcoming novel. Here’s what’s included:

Thoughts on the week
It’s nice to see a few surprises cropping up this week, beginning with the Repentia on Monday. Given that the release dates for all four of the ‘commuter audios’ were released a while ago I had been wondering if this week in the gap between two of the audios we might see the prose version of one of the Age of Sigmar audio dramas. While I get why they’re being released, they’re not massively exciting (especially considering you can pick them up in Mortarch of Night already) so I was pleasantly surprised to see not just a new story but another excellent Sisters of Battle story.

The other slight surprise was Sacrosanct & Other Stories, which for some reason had only been advertised in White Dwarf and not on the BL website. I’m actually particularly pleased with this release because it includes two short stories – A Dirge of Dust and Steel and Shiprats) which until now had only been available in the Black Library Events Anthology 2017/18 but are both excellent, and very much deserve wider releases. Hopefully the same will happen with a new 40k anthology soon! These £5 anthologies are great to see, providing not just excellent entry points for new readers but cost-effective ways for existing fans to pick up stories they might otherwise have missed. More like this please, BL!

In general I’d say it’s been a pretty good week for BL fans overall, what with plenty of new releases covering 40k, Age of Sigmar and the Horus Heresy. If I could recommend one thing that you pick up from this week’s releases it would be Prophets of Waaagh!, which is an absolute blast and TOTALLY worth picking up.

As always, here’s a rundown of what I’ve been posting this week:

Coming up…
Next week looks like being an Age of Sigmar bonanza, with the release of Realmslayer by David Guymer and Blacktalon: First Mark by Andy Clark. I can’t wait to get hold of both of those!

As always, if you’ve got any thoughts or comments on the week’s news and releases please do get in touch via the comments section below or on Facebook or Twitter.

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